My absolutely beautiful nieces.
I am surely not worthy.

Friday afternoon it was raining just enough to be uncomfortable. Had hoped it would mostly quit north across the lake, at Pearson's Mill SRA, one of my favorite walks because of the cardiac workout with the elevation changes, and because there's always plenty of trash to pick up, and lots of rotting discarded fish and deer parts to stink my dogs up well beyond skunk levels.

Rotted fish is a sure winner on the rancid scale.

Coming out of the east end of the parking lot towards the road along the top of the bluff overlooking the lake south, there were five turkey vultures in a dead tree on the bluff, and two more in a tree back across the road to my left.

It's a small dilemma: don't disturb the wild life, or watch the most superb gliders I have ever seen soar for minutes on minutes without a wing flap. This sounds like such a simple thing, and it might be, but only turkey vultures can do it, in my world. And they can and do soar and glide for as long as you watch and as far as you see, miles and miles. You should pay admission for such a spectacle.

What I mostly hear is how ugly they are. What? Carp are ugly, and most crustaceans, and hogs, and squid, and most of the world's humans devour any and all of these, given the opportunity.

And I'm not suggesting you eat turkey vultures: to the contrary, refrain from bothering them in any matter.

But grant them the respect and admiration they deserve for being total masters of even this smallest niche.

Driving to a doctor on Monday, I passed a cornfield being plowed, and there was a red tail patrolling. Don't know what she was expecting, but she certainly knew, almost ignoring the machinery, except to repeatedly sweep low into it's wake.

This is expected when hay is being cut, as rabbits pretty much drop them anywhere, especially tall grass, and it's just a feast.

Maybe mice in the little grain left.

This afternoon I was at the end of the road with no birds in particular, and as I slowed for the turn, noted a red tail closing on the wire. But he didn't alight, and so I watched him flap-flap-flap glide, and decided he wouldn't settle with me there, and went on.

Not much, but just enough.